KIRKUS REVIEW

Thirty-one years after a wakeful
flea roused the heaped-up sleepers in The Napping House, a full moon
finds the household struggling to get back to sleep.

“There is a house, / a full-moon
house, / where everyone is restless,” from “sleepless granny” to “fidgety
child” to “playful dog” to “prowling cat” to “worried mouse.” Don Wood’s
acrylics re-create the familiar bedroom with a deep blue, nighttime palette. Though
the house’s denizens are restless, its furniture oozes sleepiness, the
comfortably rounded bedsteads and chair back slumping forward slightly in
sympathy with the granny, who is clearly desperate to get some shut-eye. In
this visit to the familiar house, a “chirping cricket” finally settles everyone
down with a “full-moon song” until “no one now is restless.” Audrey Wood’s
cumulative story takes the same pattern as in the previous book, a mirroring
that its fans will instantly recognize but that works against this follow-up’s
concept. The sonorous lines are almost identical to those that describe the
sleepers in the first book, but they do not conjure restlessness; moreover, as
the cricket’s song works its magic and sends the characters to sleep, the page
turns speed up instead of slowing down for a far-from-sleepy effect. Don Wood
wisely eschews the temptation to replicate the first book’s humorously
indelible image of sleeper piled upon sleeper, instead varying composition and
perspective slightly with each double-page spread to create a gentle turbulence
that slows down gradually as the characters calm.

Fans will doubtless be happy to revisit
old friends, but they will probably still reach for the original more than this
once the novelty wears off. (Picture book. 4-8)

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